This story originally appeared in our Sept. 30 – Oct. 13, 2026 print edition. Check out the edition online here and find where you can get a print edition near you here.
When BLINK returns this October, Northern Kentucky University students won’t be keeping their artwork confined to classrooms and gallery walls.
Through a partnership with the Transit Authority of Northern Kentucky (TANK), their designs will hit the streets of Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky, where BLINK attendees will see them front and center on a bus transformed into a moving piece of public art.
The biennial festival returns Oct. 8-11, bringing large-scale light, projection and interactive art installations to Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky.
The project, “Beyond the Bridge,” is a collaboration between NKU’s School of the Arts (SOTA) and TANK. It will feature 35,000 LED lights, video projections, cameras, original sound and sculptural elements.
The exhibit invites the audience to interact with the artwork. Video projections will show live camera feeds of viewers from the other side of the bus, while animated LED lights and sound add another layer to the experience. The result is an installation that responds and reacts to the people experiencing it.
“Beyond the Bridge” is not NKU, SOTA and TANK’s first collaboration during BLINK. In 2024, students redesigned a TANK bus for the festival’s opening parade, creating wearable, light-up costumes that became part of a moving, performative sculpture.
This year, about 10 students are leading the creative team, with an additional big group of students and faculty mentors involved throughout the process. The students joined the project in March 2026 and began brainstorming what they wanted to create.
For Elle Chenault, an NKU visual communication design student and one of the project’s lead designers, the project is an opportunity to take what she’s learned in the classroom and put it on a much bigger stage, both artistically and in a leadership role.
“It’s way different than my coursework,” Chenault said. “I’m learning so much. It’s really exciting to be a part of the project.”
The project has reinforced Chenault’s confidence in her decision to pursue graphic design.
“I’ve known since the fifth grade that I wanted to be in graphic design, and it still hasn’t changed yet. I’ve known forever this is what I wanted to do,” Chenault said.
For Savannah Koch, a studio arts major at NKU, the project has brought a different perspective to the process of creating art, one focused on the people who will experience it.
Koch serves as the project’s production assistant lead and sculptor and has been working primarily on the sculpture side, including building the bridge piers and helping with measurements.
“I’ve done larger sculptures before, but nothing of this scale,” Koch said. “I’ve only done stuff for me or for a class; I’ve never done something that serves the community or other people. That’s something I’ve really taken out of this experience — giving back to the community.”
The experience, she said, has changed how she thinks about the role art can play in our community.
The bridge-inspired elements are meant to represent the connections between Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky and the bridges that link the two sides of the Ohio River. For Koch, that connection is something she hopes attendees recognize when they encounter the installation.
“I hope they walk away feeling a sense of pride about our community,” Koch said. “And I think a lot of times when we’re passing across these bridges, we don’t realize how monumental and amazing this connection we have between these two areas, these two states and these two cities.”
The project has given students an opportunity to work across many facets of producing public art. Lead students were hired and compensated to continue developing the installation over the summer through virtual and in-person collaboration.
Candice van Loveren Geis, head of the Art & Design program in NKU’s School of the Arts and a teaching professor of art education, is leading the BLINK team alongside the students and faculty mentors.
Geis said the students have taken on responsibilities that go far beyond creating the artwork, giving them experience with the practical and professional sides of producing a large-scale public project.
“It’s more like being junior designers and project managers. They’re getting to know how to manage supplying, supply distribution, and ordering of materials in a larger budget than they’re used to with individual projects,” Geis said.
Geis said opportunities like BLINK align with NKU’s emphasis on giving undergraduate students professional experience before graduation, allowing them to build resumes, develop industry skills and gain exposure through one of the region’s largest arts festivals.
“(The students) are really stepping up as professionals and making me confident that once they graduate, they’ll be able to make their way as working creatives in the region,” Geis said.
This article appears in Sept. 30 – Oct. 13, 2026.